AFTER RONNIE DIED, our house felt very empty. Charlie and I both believe that a house needs a dog living in it, but for a few months all we had were the sheepdogs kennelled outside. There was no welcoming snuffle when you came through the back door and nearly tripped over Ronnie on her bed in the passageway. There was no feeling of the comforting, unquestioning, non-judgmental presence of a dog to rush up to you with a wagging tail, delighted to see you even after the worst of days. There is nothing more relaxing than a dog pressing itself against your knee while you absentmindedly stroke its head.
And there was no furry companion for Ella and Alfie, who were nine and five when Ronnie died. I’m a great believer that children thrive when they have a dog to love and be loved by. Of course, Ella had Pearl, but Pearl, despite her tricky start, was a working sheepdog and had always lived outside. We all felt the loss of Ronnie acutely, because the house felt strangely empty.
So there was no question: Bemborough farmhouse needed a dog. We’d also had a couple of break-ins on the farm, and we know that a barking dog is the best protection you can have against thieves, especially as we live in a fairly isolated place. When you go to sleep at night, it’s reassuring to know there is a dog downstairs that will make all the right noises and make sure a burglar thinks twice about trying to get in, but neither Charlie nor I wanted a proper guard dog, like a German shepherd or a Rottweiler. We wanted a dog with a good bark, to alert us if necessary, but we also wanted a gentle family pet, and, for me, the bonus would be if it was also a gundog. So the big question was: which breed of dog should we go for?
I have fond memories of the Labradors I grew up with, but I know how gluttonous they can be, and how it’s always necessary to check there is nothing within their reach that they may decide to devour, which can be tiresome. I also vividly remember the death of Raven after eating rat poison, and I don’t want to experience something like that again.
Of course, after Nita, I’m a fan of springer spaniels, but Charlie is not so keen on them. They can be neurotic and non-stop, which can get irritating in a busy household. I considered German pointers, which are good gundogs, but I was told they are highly strung – like spaniels only with longer legs – so I crossed them off the list. So we faced a blank canvas, with all the many dog breeds – the Kennel Club recognises over 200 – to consider. We discussed it endlessly, and somehow no dog that we came up with completely suited all our needs, or appealed to us. There was a lot of talk of various small breeds but I like a larger dog that you don’t have to bend too far down to pat, so the search went on.
Until, that is, the day I was filming for Countryfile in Norfolk and I was interviewing a gamekeeper, Tracie Rickman, about the way warreners used to keep rabbits in enclosures. The rabbits were such a valuable commodity that the warreners had fortified buildings in which to butcher them for meat and for their pelts. We were filming ferrets being used to catch rabbits in an area where the soil is sandy and riddled with rabbit warrens.
When we were on a break I talked to Tracie about our dilemma, explaining our reservations about the obvious candidates, Labradors and spaniels.
‘Have you thought about Hungarian wire-haired Vizslas?’ she asked.
I had literally never heard of Vizslas and had no idea what they looked like or what temperament they had.
‘Come and see mine,’ she said, after filming was over. So I went back to her home and was met by four big, gingery, long-haired dogs, who barked loudly when I first arrived but settled down when she told them to. She explained that they were good gundogs, easily trained, and excellent house dogs, guard dogs and companions.
They ticked all our boxes and I fell for them straight away. Friends later joked that I chose a Vizsla to match my own hair colour, but the main attraction for me was that they had the right combination of attributes that we were looking for.
Charlie’s birthday was coming up later in the month, and as this dog was to be mainly hers, a house dog, I emailed her a link to a Hungarian wire-haired Vizsla website and asked if she liked the look of them. She replied enthusiastically. Like me she had never heard of them: there weren’t that many around back then, although in the years since I have seen more and more at agricultural shows, both smooth coated and wire haired.
Before I left, I asked the gamekeeper if she knew anyone who was breeding wire-haired Vizslas and who might have puppies. She told me about Clint Coventry, who lives in West Sussex with his partner Anita Scott. They are renowned and well-established owners of Hungarian wire-haired Vizslas.
Before I committed to buying one, I read up about them. The wire-haired Vizsla is now recognised as a different breed from the Hungarian Vizsla, which has a smooth coat. But the wire-haired ones are actually close descendants of the smooth-coated ones: they were bred from traditional smooth-coated Vizslas crossed with German pointers. They were only recognised as a distinct breed in Hungary in 1966. So much of their heritage and history is intertwined with their smooth-haired cousins.
The cross-breeding, which began in the 1930s, was done by two Hungarians, one a breeder of Vizslas and the other of German wire-haired pointers, with the express intention of creating a dog the same colour as the Vizsla but with a bigger, stronger frame, with a wiry double coat, better suited for working in cold weather and retrieving from icy water, which they get from the German wire-haired pointers. The undercoat is dense and water repellent and the outer coat is long, harsh and wiry. They also have thicker hair on their tails and ears than the original Vizslas. They are a very fast breed, running at a top speed of 40mph (the fastest dog is a greyhound, with a maximum speed of 43mph, so not too far adrift …)
During the Second World War, there was more interbreeding and it’s possible there is some Bloodhound, some Irish setter, some English pointer and even some standard poodle mixed in there, all contributing more assets to the eventual Hungarian wired-haired Vizsla that is now the breed standard.
So that’s a relatively short history. But the original Vizsla, the smooth-coated one, goes back a very long way. Yellow hunting dogs arrived in Hungary with the first settlers in the country, the Magyars, who came from Asia in around AD 900. The Magyars had two types of dog: one for guarding their flocks and another for hunting and water fowling, and this second one was the ancestor of the Vizsla. The name comes from a tiny hamlet in Hungary, and has been in use since AD 1100. Traditionally the dogs were used for boar hunting and hunting with falcons, and later, after firearms were invented, for retrieving game and flushing out birds.
These were the dogs of barons and warlords, owned only by the land-holding aristocracy, who jealously protected their breeding. There’s a story that during the Second World War, both the British and the Americans made plans to capture the Crown of St Stephen, the historical symbol of power in Hungary, as a major psychological blow to the Nazi regime, which was ruling the country. The Brits got there first, with an MI5 officer, Derek Peters, parachuted into Hungary with plans to get into the castle in Budapest, shoot the two guards who he believed were keeping vigil, and escape with the crown. Unfortunately for him the two guards were Vizslas, who hurled themselves at him and pinioned him to the floor.
Peters was imprisoned by the Nazis, and saw more of the reddish-coloured dogs, which were being used to guard the prison. Despite the way they had foiled his plans, he became a great admirer of them, and when he finally got back to England after the war he made his mind up to import the breed. By this time Hungary was behind the Iron Curtain, and Peters could not legally bring dogs out. Clearly not frightened of risk, he smuggled himself into the country again, but this time was dealt with ruthlessly when he reached the border on his way back home: his body was found riddled with bullets, and beside him, shot through the head, a handsome male Vizsla. Such is the pull of these beautiful dogs.
To me, the extra assets of the wire-haired breed make them a better choice than their smooth cousins. They are generally confident dogs – not aggressive but they’ll take a stand if they have to. They have an easy nature, they’re good company and easy to train (apart from housetraining, as I was to find out …) One of the facts I read, that really endeared them to me, is their nickname ‘Velcro dogs’, earned because they have great loyalty to their owners and love to stick close to them. They’ve also been described as ‘a dog for all reasons’, because of their multi-purpose skills. There’s been quite a discussion about the correct description of the colour of their coats: ‘yellow’; ‘golden rust’; ‘amber’; ‘brownish amber’; ‘the golden colour of bread crust’; ‘russet gold’; ‘copper’; and ‘dark sandy gold’ have all been suggested.
Anyway, with Charlie as keen as I was about these interesting dogs, I made contact with Clint, who had a litter of puppies just weaned and ready to leave their mother. We had a long chat over the phone and arranged to meet up in a layby on the Warwick bypass as he was attending an event near there. He brought the bitch and one of her female puppies, so that I could see them together.
Meeting in a layby, or a car park, or at a motorway service station, is something dog owners are advised never to do. It’s the way ruthless puppy-farm owners get round showing their puppies in the terrible conditions on the farms where they were born. But this was very different. I knew that Clint was a responsible and very well-respected Vizsla breeder, who runs a very good set-up. He is not a professional breeder, only having a litter when he wants a puppy for himself, and he laid down strict rules about me not breeding from our puppy until she was at least two. I signed a contract that said that if we decided we did not want her, he would have first refusal on having her back. So I was satisfied with him, and he knew enough about me from the many questions he’d asked me on the phone to be sure I would be a good owner for her. He brought all the paperwork that I needed, including her vet certificates to show she’d been wormed, her pedigree, insurance documents and a certificate of microchipping.
Puppy farms often sell dogs that are cross-breeds (especially tiny handbag-type dogs) to avoid having to give pedigree details, and they either don’t have, or even forge, veterinary certificates, and they are frequently reluctant to give receipts. Bowled over by the cuteness of the doe-eyed pup, new owners either forget to insist, or don’t even know what paperwork they should have. Often the consequences are dire, with puppies that are really sickly being passed on to unsuspecting owners who end up with vast veterinary bills or, worse, a puppy that is not healthy enough to survive. A reputable breeder like Clint will provide a record of the dog’s first visit to the vet, of the first of his two vaccinations and the flea and worm treatment he has had. Since 2016, all puppies are required by law to be microchipped by the time they are eight weeks old. However, good breeders like Clint were doing it years ago. Breeders like him also make sure they know what kind of home the dog is going to: obviously, I’m very experienced with dogs, but if I was new to owning puppies Clint would have wanted to inspect our home to make sure we had the right facilities and the right degree of knowledge for bringing up a puppy. It’s an old adage, but it’s true: a dog is for life, not just for Christmas.
I knew there was no risk with buying a puppy from him. And, of course, I fell for the wriggly little pup who was put into my hands. I don’t claim to be a dog expert, but I have handled enough animals in my life to know a sickly one, and this little girl was as healthy as could be. The only surprising thing was that, next to her shaggy mother, she was remarkably smooth looking, more like the traditional Vizsla except for the flatter head and stronger build of a wire-haired. She didn’t have a lot of hair, but what she had was smooth.
‘Don’t worry,’ Clint assured me, ‘the longer hair will come in as she gets older.’
It never did, and it became a standing joke between me and Clint. ‘The hair’s in the post,’ he would say. And I used to reply that I was expecting a discount if I ever bought another one from him. But I know he was slightly embarrassed by having sold me a wire-haired who didn’t have wire hair …
In fact, there is a wide range of hairiness in wire-haired Vizslas. Some are quite smooth, others have a coat that is more woolly than wiry. And the wiry hair can come in for up to four years after birth. Dolly, as we decided to call her, appeared on TV with me quite a lot and I was always having to tell people that she was one of the wire-haired breed.
Clint is an interesting character. He uses his Vizlas for hunting. He goes to pheasant shoots like many people with gundogs do, but also has a more unusual hobby. Clint and his partner Anita hunt with eagles all over Britain and across Europe. He has two eagles, a young male and an older, mature female. He tells me the females are always larger and more aggressive and if his two were ever released together the older female, Galina (which means chicken in Latin and Italian), who weighs 9lbs 6ozs, would kill the 7lb 6oz boy. This eagle doesn’t have a name – eagles apparently are not called by their names, and are frequently not given one. He’s not fully grown yet, and may put on another half to one pound, but he’ll never be as heavy as the female.
The eagles hunt hares and sometimes the dogs are used to flush out the quarry. But not always: an eagle could easily attack a Vizsla. There is a shortage of hares in the UK, and so most of Clint’s hunting is in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Croatia. Every year he goes to a big meeting in Opočno, in the Orlicke mountains in the Czech Republic and meets up with eagle hunters from all over the world, some flying in from America and Canada. Some of the really big female eagles hunt and kill foxes and deer, and Clint even knows a Croatian falconer who uses his eagle to take jackals (there is a strain of jackal, the European jackal, that thrives across Eastern Europe). There are, Clint estimates, only 30 to 50 eagles in the UK that are being flown.
It’s a passion Clint has had since he was a teenager; working up from flying a kestrel, then a buzzard and a falcon. It took him 20 years to get up to a golden eagle. It’s a dangerous sport, but he loves it. He wears a heavy glove on his left hand and arm, but as he takes hold of the leather straps (jesses) dangling from the eagle’s ankles with his right hand, he has on more than one occasion felt it sink its talons into his unprotected hand, once being manacled by an eagle for 30 minutes. He knew that struggling would make the bird aggressive, so he simply waited, in pain, until it released him.
‘Luckily I’ve never had a talon in a joint, like an elbow, so I’ve never needed hospital treatment,’ he says. ‘But my right hand and arm have taken a lot of punishment over the 20 years I’ve been flying eagles. I’ve had a talon go right through a finger and out the other side.’
When I ask why he does it his answer is simple: ‘There is nothing like watching these magnificent birds in flight. It’s not about the kill, or any kind of blood lust: most eagles only catch prey once in ten flights, and they are the least productive birds in all falconry. What makes all the work worthwhile is watching a wonderful, graceful creature fly free. It’s such a thrill.’
I’ve only ever caught glimpses of golden eagles in the distance when filming in Scotland, so to see these awesome creatures up close at Clint’s home was great. Clint loves his birds deeply, and talks movingly of a bird that was poisoned (inadvertently, by another eagle hunter) and which lay with its head on his lap, and which he held tenderly when it had to be put to sleep, which reminded me of the final minutes of my dogs.
Clint discovered Vizslas by accident. He was using German wire-haired pointers to pick up at pheasant shoots and he bought a puppy he thought would work well with his eagles. But the eagle attacked the bitch and Clint discovered the dog had been stealing the bird’s food. The relationship was never going to work, so the puppy went back to her original owner, who told Clint he could borrow a young Vizsla for a hunting trip he was making to Scotland.
At the time there were fewer than 150 wire-haired Vizslas in the country, and Clint had never heard of them. The one he borrowed, Lady, was a very withdrawn dog who had no energy, but gradually she came out of herself, and he found her to be loving, loyal and hard-working, a very special dog.
‘I wish I’d discovered them 20 years earlier,’ Clint says.
Lady had a litter, and one of her pups, Emmie, was the mother of our new little one, Dolly.
Charlie and the children were just as besotted with her as I was when they saw her and she quickly became Charlie’s dog. If she was attached by Velcro to anyone in the family it was Charlie, and although I fed her and took her out around the farm with me she’d choose Charlie first every time. Dolly was the first house dog we had owned together, which made her extra special.
I soon realised that Vizslas as a breed are far more sensitive than the collies and spaniels I had previously trained, and that the main ingredient needed for their training is love, not discipline. It took longer to housetrain Dolly than I expected, and I admit I was probably a bit too strong with her. With a spaniel you need to show them who is boss and you can be quite tough with them, yelling at them when they have done wrong and left a puddle in the house. Dolly would be broken for a whole day if she was spoken to harshly: if you raised your voice at her or went to grab her to carry her outside for a wee, she would whimper and cower away. Throughout her life she was a bit insecure and very sensitive.
Once, when she was still very young, she was lying near the Aga when I took a boiling saucepan of peas off the heat. As I moved it a tiny droplet of water fell onto her back and she yelped. It didn’t burn her or cause a blister, but it obviously stung her. From then on, whenever anyone started cooking she would leave the room. She never forgot that tiny incident.
We wanted to breed from Dolly, so she went to stay with Clint and Anita to run with one of their dogs. It turned out Dolly was completely frigid: she wouldn’t let the dog anywhere near her. She just wasn’t having it. When a bitch refuses to breed there’s not a lot you can do, but we were disappointed because we had planned to keep one of her litter. Most disappointed of all the family was Alfie because we told him that he could have the puppy we kept as his own dog. He was really excited when Dolly went off for her romantic assignation in Sussex and crushed when she came back resolutely not pregnant. He’d even chosen a name: his puppy was going to be called Boo.
We were thinking about what to do when I was chatting to a friend, Jon King, who used to be our livestock manager, one day shortly after Dolly’s return and he mentioned that he had heard about a litter of wire-haired Vizslas that were ready to find new homes. The breeder lived in Gloucestershire, not too far from us, so Charlie, Ella and I headed off to see them. It was early May, and Alfie’s tenth birthday was only a couple of weeks away, so we planned to get a puppy for him, although we didn’t mention it to him because we didn’t want him to be disappointed again. Some of the pups in the litter of six were already spoken for and they all wore a different-coloured collar to make sure the right ones went to the right new owners. We played with them in the garden, threw toys for them and I checked them over looking for any health problems. In the end, we settled for the one with the red collar.
On the day of Alfie’s birthday, we had arranged for Charlie to pick up the puppy on her way back from her job in Bristol where she worked in television, as it was only a short diversion from the motorway for her. It meant that Alfie didn’t get his main present until late in the afternoon. He had a few presents in the morning before we all raced off to work or went to school and Alfie was told he could open the others in the afternoon when we were all back, and then we’d cut his birthday cake.
It was a sunny day, spring was slipping into summer and the garden was looking green and lovely. Ella, Alfie and I were sitting outside, but it was late afternoon by the time I heard Charlie’s car, and I know Alfie was beginning to fear his longed-for present wasn’t going to materialise.
‘I was sort of expecting it, because we’d talked about names for a puppy when Dolly tried to have puppies,’ he says. ‘But it was getting late and I began to think it wasn’t going to happen.’
When I heard Charlie’s footsteps approaching I cupped my hands over Alfie’s eyes. As she walked into the garden with the little bundle nestled in her arms I uncovered his eyes and we all shouted: ‘Boo!’ And there she was, his very own Boo, a little bundle of joy.
Alfie’s face beamed with the biggest smile you have ever seen, and for a few moments I relived that wonderful Christmas when I first set eyes on Nita, snuggled in the old tea chest. Alfie was, literally, speechless. He took the puppy in his arms, and that was the start of a deep relationship between the two of them. As Nita was my dog, as Dolly was Charlie’s, as Pearl is Ella’s, so Boo is Alfie’s. If we are walking around the farm together and Alfie heads off in a different direction, Boo never hesitates: it is him she goes with, not me.
Boo has grown into an excellent gundog, with the softest of mouths. Gundogs need soft mouths because they must never bite into the game they are retrieving. No one wants to eat a pheasant or partridge that has been chomped into by an over-zealous dog. Boo’s mouth is so soft that one day Charlie saw her in the garden with wings sticking out from either side of her mouth. There were loads of birds fussing round the bird table and clearly Boo had caught one. Charlie shouted to her to let go, and when Boo opened her mouth a blue tit flew out, completely undamaged.
A good gundog will carry an egg without breaking it, and Vizslas have proved to be every bit as good as the more traditional Labradors and retrievers. From childhood I have loved watching gundogs work. Before I went to agricultural college I spent a year working on the Chatsworth Estate of the Duchess of Devonshire, and although I missed Nita, who stayed at home, there were dogs all around and I was in awe of these highly trained gundogs. Ours at home were really good field dogs, but these were trained to an even higher level, and each gamekeeper would have his own – perhaps as many as four or five – mainly Labradors and spaniels. I was full of admiration for the control they had: a gamekeeper could send one of his dogs to fetch a pheasant and the others would sit and stay.
Of course, to a gamekeeper a well-trained dog is a tool of the trade, and must be kept in good condition like any other tool. The dogs on the Chatsworth Estate needed to be very well controlled because it was a very professionally run estate and there was no place for an unruly dog.
The head gamekeeper also had a German shepherd. It had been trained as a police dog and he used it to deter poachers. He had fantastic control over it. It was a lovely, soft dog, who would play with me and muck about – until he put its collar on. The minute the collar went on it was just like turning a switch and the dog was in work mode. It was a lesson to me in how well trained dogs can be, if you have time and effort to put into it.
I’m sure our Vizslas could work at that level: the breed is capable of it. But from my point of view, all that is required is that they are competent and willing retrievers of game, and the rest of the time are affectionate family pets.
We bred from Boo while she was still young, at three years old. I heard about a lady in Bristol, Rebecca Bye, who has a dog called Frost, and we arranged to get them together here at the farm. It was a bit of a palaver: Frost got over excited the first time and swelled up before he was inside Boo, but they had another go when he had calmed down and this time he hit the jackpot. Rebecca brought him back for a follow-up mating, just to be sure.
I took Boo to the vet a month later and she was scanned, which showed she was having six or eight puppies (it’s hard to tell on a scan with so many of them wriggling around). The scanning was filmed for Countryfile to be included within one of the ‘Adam’s Farm’ pieces, telling the story of everyday life on the farm.
We borrowed a whelping box from a friend, which is a box big enough for the bitch to lie down but designed so that she can’t squash or smother her own puppies. Then we waited for it all to kick off, which it did a day or two later. I heard her whining, panting and padding around the kitchen at 4.30am so I went down to her, took her outside for a wee and settled her in the box. It was 6am when the first puppy showed its head, but I could see it was stuck and Boo was panting and distressed. I’ve helped lots of lambs being born and I’ve seen puppies being born, so I had no hesitation in helping her, by easing it out. She yelped a little bit as the first puppy popped out, but she was not at all aggressive towards me for helping, which some bitches are.
Her firstborn was a lovely little girl pup, and she instantly licked her all over. I knew at that moment that Boo was an instinctively good mother, even though the whole process must have felt alien to her this first time. After that, she gave birth to another puppy every half-hour to 45 minutes, and it took all morning for the full litter of six to be born. The vet had told me that if any of the pups took more than 45 minutes I should ring for help, but I didn’t need to – although I was watching the clock with a couple of them.
Boo was brilliant. I helped them latch on, and they were happily suckling as soon as she had licked them clean. They were all the Vizsla reddish colour, but a bit stripy at birth, which is normal. Ella loves the theatre, so she gave them all Shakespearean names: Beatrice, Romeo, Rosalind, Desdemona, Gertrude and Ophelia, completely ignoring my preference for one syllable names! They had different lengths of hair, and as they got older it was clear that Romeo and two of the little bitches had shorter hair, more like Dolly, and the other three were as hairy as Boo herself.
We sold them all to local people: I think Dolly and Boo were good ambassadors for this special breed of dog and, having met them, there was no shortage of people wanting to take one. I copied Clint’s example and gave them all similar contracts to the one he gave me. Because the new owners lived locally it was easy enough for me to ensure they all went to suitable homes.
We decided not to keep one as we fully intended to have another litter from Boo a couple of years later, and keep one of those puppies so that, as Dolly grew old, there was another little one in the house.
Tragically, our plans were overtaken by Dolly’s death, which I will talk about in the next chapter. Now we regretted not keeping one of Boo’s litter because we were down to one dog in the house, and we like to overlap them so that we have a little one growing up alongside the older ones. We could not breed from Boo again so soon, so we rang Clint on the off-chance he may have some pups. Clint told me his bitch was pregnant and he would, of course, save us a bitch pup if there was one.
By coincidence, I was filming down in Sussex, so when they were born I went to see the new litter of puppies, and in particular to see the parents. The dog was one that Clint had imported and was very hairy and really lively. Clint let him out and he bounced around full of beans and clearly adored Clint. We took him out into the field where Clint had his chickens – the dog stalked one and then went on point, freezing to the spot. Clint explained he was a brilliant working dog. I was slightly worried that his excitable temperament may be a bit too much for me to handle, though, if it was inherited by the pups. Next I met the bitch who had a shorter coat than the dad, with sweet, loving eyes and a gentle nature. Clint explained that she, too, was brilliant at working and very intelligent. I really hoped we could get one like her.
A couple of weeks later Charlie and I went down together to choose another little girl wire-haired Vizsla. There were six pups, two dogs and four bitches. Clint had chosen a little bitch pup for himself and that left us three to choose from. Clint was away in Hungary with his golden eagles when we visited, and so his partner Anita looked after us. We popped all those that weren’t available into the kennel, leaving the three prospective pups running around. One immediately went to the corner of the run and sat there looking very shy and insecure. For me this meant that it wasn’t the sort of character I was looking for. The other two bounded around and jumped up at us. The first one Charlie picked up nestled into her arms, holding its head back and pressing it under her chin. I could see in Charlie’s eyes that she was quickly falling in love with this one. I picked up the other one and checked its teeth, feet and nipples to ensure they were even, in case we wanted to breed from her in the future – that’s the farmer coming out in me. The one Charlie was cuddling was quite small with shorter hair. Charlie and I swapped pups and again the one she was holding nestled into her with as much love and affection as the first. What an impossible decision to make. Two gorgeous puppies, either would do us well. The final decision was made because we really wanted a reasonably sized dog with a similar coat to Boo, not too long but not too short. Out of the two puppies, the one I was originally holding was probably the best option for us. Anita confirmed to us that we had made a great choice and as she has seen dozens of puppies over the years, I trust her judgment. So we had our new puppy.
She wasn’t ready to leave her mother, and I was just about to set off on an amazing three-week trip to Australia and New Zealand, filming for Countryfile. But as soon as I got back, Charlie drove down and collected her: the latest addition to our household, who we have called Olive.
At least, the rest of the family chose Olive. I’m all in favour of a dog having a one-syllable name, as a short, sharp name is easier for them to learn and better when you are training them. But I was outvoted, and now that she’s here, very much part of the family, Olive seems very appropriate.
Alfie said he was going to train her: ‘I was very young, just ten, when I got Boo, so I probably didn’t work hard enough at her training. But I’ll put in more time with Olive.’
Olive is certainly a very sweet-natured puppy, and she loves other dogs almost as much as she loves us. The first thing she does when I open the back door in the morning is to run over to Peg’s kennel to say hello. Peg is very tolerant with her.
There are so many dangers on a farm that it is important to acclimatise her nice and slowly. I’ve been taking her around with me on certain routine jobs, getting her used to travelling in the back of the Polaris 4x4. When she was four months old I introduced her to sheep for the first time. They can be very flighty and it’s important she learns to respect them. She has behaved very well with them so far: on that first meeting, which was filmed for Countryfile, I put her down near them. She was clearly a little bit nervous, but her reaction was perfect: not over-excited, backing off when the sheep approached her.
All dogs, not just those that live on a farm, should be taught to be respectful around sheep and kept on a lead at all times when they are being walked through fields with sheep, especially pregnant ewes and ewes with lambs. A dog that is loose can worry sheep, at worse attacking them or causing them to abort. It’s every shepherd’s nightmare: a rogue dog, following its instincts to prey on sheep, causing havoc with the wellbeing of the flock and the livelihood of the shepherd.
It’s also important that Olive learns to be patient and quiet in the back of the trailer, so I left her in there for a while with the other dogs and she was very good. To introduce her to the cattle I put her on a lead – cattle can be inquisitive and aggressive around dogs, and as she’s going to see a lot of them for the rest of her life, it’s vital she knows how to react to them. The first time she met the cows she barked a bit, not very loudly, and I made sure I kept the encounter short. Gradually she has been introduced more and more to the animals and the routines of the farm.
Living on a farm is exciting and scary for a puppy, but one thing is certain: she’ll never be bored. And I enjoy her company – having a puppy around always brightens up my day.